This feature is available from the Pro plan and above.
Use the Zendesk Guide app in Lokalise to translate your Zendesk Help Desk content efficiently.
Prerequisites
Enabling localizations
Before translating, you may want to add the target languages for your help center. This can be done in the Zendesk Admin Center under Account > Localization.
Adding languages to the help center
Go to Help center settings > Language settings and select the languages you need. Click Add new language if you want to create more.
Other considerations
To export and manage translated content, your Zendesk profile must have permissions to modify Zendesk Guide content. The user who installs the Zendesk Guide app should have admin or agent access with publishing permissions to create and update articles.
Integrating Zendesk Guide with Lokalise
Create Lokalise project
If you haven’t already, create a Marketing and support project in Lokalise.
Enter a project name, select the base and target languages, and choose Zendesk Guide from the Content integration dropdown.
Click Create project to finalize the setup.
Installing the app
Once the project is created, you should be redirected to the Content management tab. If this doesn’t happen, open your Marketing and support project manually, go to the Content management tab, and click Install.
A dialog will appear asking for your Zendesk subdomain. If your help center URL is mycorp.zendesk.com, then the subdomain is mycorp.
Click Authorize and allow Lokalise to access your Zendesk project.
Importing items
This app supports automated import. You can find more details in the corresponding article.
Once you authorize, a list of sections, categories, and articles will appear. Select the items you need and click Import selected to bring them into your Lokalise project for translation.
A dialog will appear where you can adjust import settings:
Import languages – choose one or more languages to import. Any missing languages will be automatically added to your Lokalise project.
Overwrite updated translations – enable this if you want to update previously imported translations with the latest content from Zendesk.
Skip key creation for empty translations – prevents Lokalise from creating keys for empty Zendesk items.
Assign tags – add tags to translation keys based on the selected content. For example, choosing Title will tag keys with their corresponding article titles.
Click OK to start the import. The process will run in the background, and you can track its status on the Activity page.
To refine your selection, use the Filter dropdown or the search box in the top right corner.
Performing translations
Once the items are imported and new keys are created, you can begin translating them as usual.
If you enabled Assign tags during the import process, each newly created key will have the following tags:
Zendesk Guide – identifies content related to Zendesk Guide.
title or body – indicates whether the key corresponds to an article title or body text.
Item type tag – specifies whether the key belongs to an article, section, or category.
Content-specific tag – uses the name of the corresponding post, section, or category for easy identification.
Exporting to Zendesk Guide
This app supports automated export. More details can be found in the corresponding article.
Once translations are complete, go to the Content management tab in your Lokalise project, select the items you want to export, and click Export selected.
In the export dialog, choose the languages to export. If needed, enable Don't export empty translations to avoid exporting untranslated content. The selected languages will then be updated in Zendesk.
Reimporting from Zendesk guide
If any changes were made in Zendesk, you can update the corresponding Lokalise keys by reimporting content. Under the Content management tab, select one or more linked items and click Import selected to bring in the latest updates.
Known limitations
Content blocks are exported as plain text.
The Zendesk API doesn't preserve the structure or formatting of content blocks during export. When these blocks are translated in Lokalise, they’re handled as simple text. So after importing back to Zendesk, you'll likely need to manually check and reformat content blocks to ensure everything looks right.Lokalise only syncs existing content.
Lokalise can sync categories, sections, and articles that already exist in your Zendesk Help Center. New content must be created directly in Zendesk first — you can’t create new articles from Lokalise and push them to Zendesk.Zendesk Guide API has publishing state limitations.
When an article is in the Published and In Progress state — meaning it's live but also being edited — the Zendesk API does not provide the latest draft version. In this state, Lokalise will pull in the published version, not the one currently being edited.
To get the latest changes synced, the article must be in one of these states:Draft – unpublished and editable.
Draft and In Progress – still a draft, but actively being edited.
Published – final version, with no in-progress edits.
Basically:
You get the freshest copy when the article is a draft (in any form) or fully published.
You don’t get the latest changes if the article is published but still being edited ("Published and In Progress").